First French Foot-Prinis Beyond tJte Lakes. 117 



amounted to you cannot easily learn from books. French and 

 English nneasures were incommensurable. But what I long sought 

 in vain, I have learned from the casual remark of an ancient fur- 

 trader, that a chopine was so small a quantity as would not make 

 an Indian drunk more than once. An Indian is quite unlike an 

 Irishman. Bat in one thing they agree. Neither is consciously 

 guilty of a bull when he says: "Give me the superfluities of life 

 and I will give up the necessaries. Traders too scrupulous to sell 

 liquor to an Indian, would still exact a beaver of him for a single 

 four pound loaf of bread. 



French commercial men bore a charmed life. The fiercest sav- 

 ages spared both them and their goods, lest no more of that desira- 

 ble class should come among their tribes. They had too much 

 wit to kill the geese who were their only hope of golden eggs. 

 La Salle's testimony is: (M. 2,281.) ''The savages take better 

 care of us French than of their own children. From us only can 

 they get guns and goods." Hennepin relates that he would have 

 been scalped by his Indian captors had they not judged that his 

 death would hinder others of his countrymen from bringing them 

 iron. 



French traders soon brought with them more merchandise than 

 they could transport overland. They were thus led to establish 

 trading ^:)05fe on navigable streams and at carrying-places. We 

 naturally think such commercial stations would be set up first 

 along the St. Lawrence and Lahe Ontario., those natural highways 

 to and from the west. They were not. Those waters were watched 

 by the Iroquois ; fiercest in fight of all Indians, foes of France, 

 allies of Holland and England. Accordingly the thoroughfare 

 of western Indians to Quebec and of French traders to the upper 

 lakes, was by the Ottawa., a river which, lying farther north, was 

 comparatively safe from Iroquois ambuscades, which were with 

 reason more dreaded than cold, famine, storm and cataract 



Hence it came to pass that the French while they still knew 

 nothing of Lake Erie and Niagara, were familiar with Lake 

 Superior. Two of their traders had penetrated into that inland 

 sea in 1658. 



Even after the French were at peace with the Indians on the 



